Moth

Destroyed

I saw my first-ever red-shouldered hawk today. We watched each other for a long time.

I saw the red-shouldered hawk where the brook and meadow meet. Part of me is still there.

I found where the killdeer go at night.

The internet is screwed. Take up birding.

I went outside to find the blue jay who was imitating a hawk. Instead, I saw a red-tailed hawk shoot out of my sweetgum tree.

There’s a northern flicker nesting in my silver maple.

Why am I so happy? Because I’m destroyed.

Suddenly, the air is snow-colored.

And sometimes a day like today is like / an empty room and this empty room / is a treasure. — Allison Grayhurst

Nostalgia, you are a leaking window.

Like finials, mourning doves embellish my fence on this otherwise unadorned day.

I saw an eastern bluebird in my yard today. I SAW AN EASTERN BLUEBIRD IN MY YARD TODAY.

I found two nests in the silver maple.

Two doors down, a boy rides his toy tractor through the leaves.

All the time I pray to Buddha / I keep on / killing mosquitoes. — Issa

My advice? Find some earth. Walk on it, slowly.

You can find me in the wetlands, but that’s not an invitation to come find me.

Night. A moth at my window. Hello.

I lost my curse words in the woods.

How I look when I see birds is not how I look when I see people.

Wings and Air

Leaves from our red oak appliqué the lawn. The fall-blooming plants have lost their flowers, save for two azaleas. Butterflies and moths have been visiting the azaleas since the butterfly bushes started dying back. Above, I see woodpeckers from time to time. They dance up and down the trunks of our sweet gums. I’ve seen a slate-colored junco on two occasions. Both times, he was sneaking over the fence to take a dip in one of our birdbaths.

We have three birdbaths. Before we moved to this house, I never paid attention to birds, at least not close attention. The birdbaths came with the home, a gift of sorts from the previous owner. The birds who visit our yard regularly were also a gift. Shortly after moving here, I decided it was time to do something about my long-held desire to identify the birds I saw. I got my wish when I was given a set of bird flashcards and a pair of binoculars. The View-Master effect of the binoculars made the whole world pop to life. I couldn’t believe such wonder existed right outside my door. I’ve spent countless hours not only watching birds but also examining trees, the sky, squirrels, the texture of all manner of surfaces, the shrubs at the back of the property that lean into each other like old friends, and so on.

One of my favorite birds is the junco. I remember them from when we lived here years ago, before we moved away (and subsequently moved back). They frequented the yard at our first house. I remember that time fondly. My trauma was about half what it is now, though those earlier traumas were closer to me, more deeply imprinted, less smoothed by time, effort and consideration. Now, the most recent traumas are the jagged ones. They jar me from sleep at night and intrude on my waking hours.

I’ve been fighting for a long time, for myself and for others. For the most part, I feel unheard and unseen. I am frustrated by the lack of literacy around trauma, oppression, discrimination, and other issues that profoundly affect people’s health and well-being. I am frustrated that neurotypicality is imposed on all levels and that social constructs are mistaken for truths.

The birds help. Immensely. They don’t give me answers, and that’s the whole point of paying attention to them. They allow me to stay on a little island called here and now, unaffected by what’s happened in my past and unburdened by the extremely difficult work of being heard above the din of prevailing beliefs and values.

In these small slices of time, there is nothing wrong, nothing at all. The world is wings and air, and I am part of it.

Ordinary Birds

I am fascinated by ordinary birds.

All afternoon, two downy woodpeckers danced up and down the sweet gum tree.

Sprinklers have dressed the trees in dark skirts.

Jealousy: when the red-bellied woodpecker is in my neighbor’s yard, not mine.

Killdeers alight between two partially constructed mansions. For now, this land is still theirs.

Like the blind raccoon, I am afraid of wind, high grass, birds, and snow.

As I turned toward it, the light seemed to be a solid.

A squirrel and I startle one another.

I’ll watch the birds you ignore.

An American kestrel sits alone on a power line. It begins to rain.

Symmetry: six mourning doves evenly spaced on a neighbor’s cable line.

Dirt is my personal stylist.

Grebes float on the man-made lake as the sky drifts into night.

We all have to love something. Why not the cecropia moth?

Overhead, birds break like pool balls.

Poor vision turns fall leaves into cardinals.

Above, the turkey vulture looks like a scalloped black slip.

Sewage Creek

I came home to a downy woodpecker, a chipmunk, and a baby bunny. They were all in the yard together.

Walking leaf, you don’t look like the trees in these parts.

Praying mantis, I see you’ve come to my window again tonight.

I was offered a gondola ride on sewage creek. I said no.

Weeds teach me about the wind.

Daylily, how many fragile ribs guard your seeds?

Fall: Leaves flutter in our sentences.

Rain has turned the sweetgum bark tobacco brown.

My friend is standing in a field painting animals.

That perfect time in the garden when everything is dying but nothing is dead.

Lawn moths are the angels of this abandoned prayer labyrinth.

At the old golf course, two kestrels hunt for grasshoppers.

October: The old crabapple’s leaves are dipped in red wine.

Little blue heron, the lake has made a shimmering replica of you.

Night: We move toads off the road so they won’t get run over.

Beneath the harvest moon, the syncopated call of a great horned owl.

In their appliquéd ballgowns, late-blooming azaleas wait for suitors who never arrive.

Pollinators

Atop his favorite granite stone, my dearest chipmunk surveys his territory. There’s time to take it all in before the rain falls.

The rain is loosening the leaves from my red maple. What will I shed today?

I’m a fool like all the others: I follow the light.

Mine is also a life of enchantment.

Together, we are a different organism.

We stand looking at this root, and this root is fire.

And within my body, / another body … sings; there is no other body, / it sings, / there is no other world — Jane Hirshfield

The squirrel who has been nursing eats an acorn on my hammock.

A chipmunk uses railroad ties as a superhighway.

A shower of acorns. Look up! Two squirrels roughhouse in the old oak tree.

I am not alone. The cricket is here. The praying mantis is here. The chipmunk. The woodpecker. Two hummingbirds. And more. And more.

Moths are pollinators, too.

Someday, I will learn how to live. Until then, I will learn about life from the plants and animals in my backyard.

Did you know plants have memories? They learn how to not be afraid. They retain that information. If the Mimosa pudica can do it, so can I.

Mimosa pudica is also known as the sensitive plant, the shy plant, the touch-me-not plant. We could learn a lot from each other.

I saw the hawk flying low today, then high, a shadow traversing my neighbor’s roof.

Flight

Because during the poetry class I was just in, a moth flitted across the room. Scratch that. Shot across the room with a speed and straight-line purpose seldom seen in moths, even those under round-the-clock observation. The moth went right into my left eye. The instructor was trying to keep things on task as I, an impacted vessel, held my hand to my face and listed a bit in the direction of my injury.

I believe all the voices in my head are my mother. My father has not once spoken to me since his death.

Nothing dramatic, not like the time a gnat flew into my right eye at full force over at Yellowstone when all I wanted was to relaxedly take in a little scenery. I was convinced the gnat had grown a stinger for the sole purpose of injecting me on the cornea. It had not in fact stung me, but came as close to the sensation of stinging as anything without a stinger could, so to this day I maintain that it stung. I screamed, jumped about and generally carried on.

Let’s face it. I make people uncomfortable. Even when I’m not screaming, jumping about and generally carrying on. Add to this winged creatures coming at my eyes, and (I can only envision) the feeling of uncomfortable-ness I cause in others would be increased, though by what positive exponent remains to be documented. If you are interested in that degree of specificity, further experiments and data analyses will be necessary, and I’m not really down with all that, being, as I happen to be, so uncomfortable both with: 1. making people any more uncomfortable than I usually do, and 2. having things with wings deliberately sent into my eye. I am a human, after all. And these are only moths and such. I am not earth, and they are not bombs. Let’s not forget these vital distinctions.

I want also to touch on this: Things without wings going into my eye I am not fond of either. Grit, pencil shavings, salt, etc. have all made their way in at one time or another. I can only imagine what’s accumulated behind my retinae. Some things might not dissolve and instead be siphoned up through my optic nerve. Especially et cetera. I bet et cetera has a long half-life. Can you imagine how long the list would be if we detailed everything et cetera houses? Set end to end, et cetera ‘s contents would entirely wrap each and every one of our bodies, like a good bandaging job for an everywhere injury. Imagine how et cetera weighs, what we’ve made it take on, you and I. It must surely feel like a moth is always in etc’s eye. Then, to add insult to injury, we abbreviate it. How etc. aches to be longer. For recognition of all we’ve made it become. Et cetera is a moth with its wings pulled off, a thing whose shadowy undertow has been erased.

But I risk losing my point if I start talking about anything other than today and this moth. So let’s stick with the moth for now. Actually, I feel I have exhausted the subject. I wouldn’t want to write past my ending. I could go into how I had to excuse myself from the class and make my way to the restroom, how the instructor did not acknowledge what was up with my eye and the whole leaning-slightly business, or how perhaps he did acknowledge it because I do seem to recall a disembodied voice saying “I saw that” after I finally worked up the courage to say, “A moth just flew into my eye. I am hurt.”

However, I couldn’t tell you with certainty if the person who replied was the instructor, a male student, or some voice of recognition in my head. The last notion really isn’t that absurd, except that studies show almost all imagined voices are female, not male. Something about the cadence and lilt women lend to the words they/we speak. (Sorry for the slip. I sometimes forget I am a woman when I speak of women. I wonder if “a moth” ever forgets it is “moth” and what it thinks it is instead, or if it ever feels it is nothing. If I were a moth, which I am not, I believe I would lapse into thinking I was all wing. Single wing like a small fan in nothing’s hand.)

But back to voices. I believe all the voices in my head are my mother. My father has not once spoken to me since his death. I do not love him less for it.

I almost forgot to mention how I could mention why I didn’t go back to the class. It wasn’t my hurt eye, although my eye hurt. It was fear. Or poetry. In that room, there was no air for poetry, not for me. My way of writing it. I should mention this was all playing out inside me, again no fault of the class or instructor. In fact nobody saw my discomfort, the air being pushed out of my lungs one breath at a time, less air coming back with each inhalation, a kind of measured dirge toward suffocation.

The moth knew this was happening, something close to panic but not quite panic. It doesn’t surprise me the moth would recognize panic in the making, given the tizzy of a short moth-life. Poetry was unsafe for me in that moment, and the moth knew it. Hence the speed. The direction. Self-sacrificing it went into me, my light, the window of my lighthouse, to protect me. It’s the only logical explanation.

A woman just slipped into the seat across from me in the computer lab where I’ve set up camp to write this. I told her my story. She listened. She said to take a spoon, fill it with water, and lower my eye into it. She, too, is a moth. Another kind of savior.

I could keep going and going, like a winged thing fighting its way to its destination: final, temporary or insulary. But I think I will stop with the sentence, “So let’s stick with the moth for now.” That seems a proper ending. But I will add this: My only regret is not having been considerate enough to make sure the moth was OK before running out of the room. We should treat those who save us with more kindness.